A lot of patients sometimes will come in saying they want to only take natural products. This is a silly argument. All of our prescription drugs come from some natural product that someone discovered, that we can mass produce in a laboratory.

Arsenic is a naturally occurring substance, would you eat it? Even small amounts will kill you.

One of the greatest advancements in cardiovascular health is Aspirin. Aspirin comes from willow tree bark. I don’t tell patients to eat tree bark. I tell them to take an Aspirin.

Another class of drugs that has been shown to improve mortality and help people live longer and healthier lives is a group of drugs known as ACE inhibitors. These come from viper snake venom. They lower your blood pressure, help your heart stay healthy after a heart attack, as well as many other benefits. It comes from a naturally occurring substance, viper venom, but we can now make it in a laboratory for mass production.

Likewise, most of our medications start as naturally occurring substances that we can replicate and mass produce.